Art dealer Christophe Van de Weghe strode into Christie’s auction house in New York with orders from a mystery client. His mission that night, Nov. 12, 2013, was to buy a specific painting—for which the client was willing to pay an astonishingly high price. “He gave me a number, and he had me bid on…

Amazon Studios Amy Landecker and Jeffrey Tambor in a scene from Transparent After I’d watched all ten half-hour episodes of the first season of Transparent in just two evenings, it occurred to me that, with the exception of Louie , most of the TV series I’d binge-watched— The Wire , Breaking Bad ,…

There’s a little flea market down the road from us, just a few tables and a coffee stall every Saturday in the summer, where one of the regulars is an oldish bloke who sells men’s trinkets: penknives, hip flasks, metal badges, that kind of thing. One corner of his table is piled with broken…

I’ve always been intrigued by the term “fashion victim.” As I understand it, it’s a phrase used by people who write about fashion to sneer at the people who take what they write seriously–the ones who actually buy the extremely pricey clothes the fashion writers promote. I could be wrong; as a…

A history of perfume doubles as a how-to. I came of age during the perfume-averse ’90s, when the world was still reeling from an overdose of Poison the decade before and had therefore decided that it was better not to smell like anything, or to smell very slightly lemony. CK One, the unisex…

Contributor on 08.20.14 in Features On the advent of the release of Taylor Swift’s album announcement and new video premiere, Wondering Sound assembled a roundtable of critics and writers to weigh in on the song and its implications. The Players J. Edward Keyes is Wondering Sound’s Editor in Chief.…

Last week, I got into a fight on Twitter with New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait, whose work I respect, and it wasn’t about anything that either of us had written; rather, we were tussling over the merits of a piece written by Tom Junod, for Esquire , about how today’s 42-year-old women are hotter…

For Evgenia Kara Walker/Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York Kara Walker: Burn , cut paper and adhesive on wall, 1998 This happened in 1967. That year, the American author Truman Capote, then forty-three years old, published a beautiful essay he titled “Ghosts in Sunlight.” The piece—it’s not very…

In this fascinating conversation, the digital technology writer talks about the future of media as predicted by everything from pencil sharpeners to 'Sherlock.'

Nobody saw it coming. On December 21, 2011, the ­season-one finale of FX’s American Horror Story baffled viewers by killing every last one of the show’s main characters. But an even ­bigger shock came the next day, when co-creator Ryan Murphy revealed during a conference call with reporters that his…

Noel: One of the big surprises of the television season so far has been how good the FX series Fargo is. It’s surprising mainly because there was no reason to expect that such a self-contained, stylistically distinctive movie could be translated into a TV show—even though one of the most popular…

Credit PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY RUTH MARGALIT When I was growing up in Israel, there was a short-lived show on television called “ Hahaverim Shel Yael ” (“Yael’s Friends”), which featured a peppy girl who introduced short clips acted out by puppets. The actress who played Yael was probably in her…

In 1952, an African-American woman named Sarah Bulah filed a lawsuit challenging the segregated education system in her home state of Delaware. Bulah lived near a spacious, modern, whites-only high school, but her daughter, Shirley, was forced to attend a decrepit, single-room school. The state…

Vincent Kartheiser, photographed by Carlos Serrao. Styling by Warren Alfie Baker for Margaret Maldonado; Grooming by Louise Moon. Shirt by Viktor & Rolf. Photo: Carlos Serrao/New York Magazine Mad Men ’s sixth season was a disastrous one for Pete Campbell, Sterling Cooper & Partners’ charmingly…

As school was ending one afternoon, I walked through the corridors to a far corner of the building and into the classroom of Lou Volpe, the school’s drama director, who four decades ago was my English teacher. His room was furnished with old couches and living-room chairs, donated stuff that…

This Week on Dear Television: “Theses on the Dance Moves of Ilana Glazer,” from Phillip Maciak ¤ Theses on the Dance Moves of Ilana Glazer By Phillip Maciak April 2, 2014 I This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees…

SEOUL — It is a Saturday night and one of the unlikeliest hot spots in the city is packed. More than 100 people are sprawled at tables, sipping, talking, munching. Young women are dressed as if at a nightclub. Some have been here for hours. A concert? A dinner party? Nope. This, believe it or not,…

I know too much. Each Tuesday night, as I scurry to my friends' apartment to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer , I carry more information than could possibly be good for me. I know the title of the episode to come, the name of the writer, often the basic plot. Occasionally, if I really can't resist,…

A few days ago, the critic Matt Seitz wrote a valuable, provocative, and deliciously finger-jabbing manifesto , arguing that TV and film critics concentrate too much on plot and character and theme and don’t write enough about visual craft. This is true. It’s certainly been true at times in my own…

When I was 14, I spent a huge amount of time on the internet, but not the internet we know today. It was 1994, so while the world wide web existed, it wasn’t generally accessible. Prodigy and CompuServe were popular, and AOL was on the rise, but I didn’t have access to the web, and no one I knew had…

Returning to the town of Neptune in the Veronica Mars movie is a bit like looking up your high school friends on Facebook. The people we used to know—the ones we stopped seeing when we graduated—have a way of staying suspended in the amber of memory, perpetually locked in the same hairstyles, habits…

I don’t remotely fit the “Veronica Mars” demographic. I was a latecomer to the whole “Buffy” thing — something about vampires and superpowers always made me run, screaming, in the opposite direction. I never made it through an entire Nancy Drew mystery, and I only read “Harriet the Spy” once. On top…

Illustration by Tom Gauld Princess Leia and Harry Potter are dining in the eat-in kitchen of their midcentury modern home, sunshine bouncing off the white floors and refracting through the enormous aquarium that separates the kitchen from the den. “I need more pink tiles for my dining room!” their…

HOW OLD IS A woman of a certain age? Only a Nosy Parker would try to find out. But the expression is becoming androgynous, and the age seems to be creeping upward. Sidney Wade, a woman who lives in Gainesville, Fla., reports that she was complaining to a friend, Debora Greger, about a loss of hair:…

“Pastoral (Den’en),” by Ay-O, in “Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant-Garde” at the Museum of Modern Art, which featured non-Western works that are too rarely seen. Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo A new year. A new New York mayor. Old problems with art in New York. I have a collection of complaints and a…

Gone Girl 's sickening worldview This is not a book I would normally read; I rarely read mysteries, and the title, Gone Girl , is irritating on its face. I bought it anyway because two friends recommended it with enormous enthusiasm, and because I was curious about its enormous popularity: the…

Giles Ashford Tod Williams and Billie Tsien’s Folk Art building, 1997-2001 The only surprising thing about the Museum of Modern Art’s announcement in April that it intends to demolish Tod Williams and Billie Tsien’s American Folk Art Museum of 1997–2001—an architectural gem that abuts the Modern’s…

18 Brides in a Year If I count events attended plus invitations received, my year in weddings tallies up at 18. I sometimes try to unload a bit of my social vertigo in regards to this figure, and people are like “Whaaaat,” and I reply that I know, it’s crazy , there is no good reason that someone…

Critically acclaimed and Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award nominated author Benjamin Rosenbaum makes his first appearance on Tor.com with an epistolary story—of a sort. Rosenbaum is a software developer by trade, which gives him precisely the right background to think through the implications of…

Skip Sterling for The Morning News Donkey Talk is a tri-monthly periodical or, as its back cover says, “a comprehensive ‘assyclopedia’ containing everything you would ever want or need to know about donkey ownership.” This is where you go if you want to find out how to keep that womanizing stud of a…

Essays Farewell to the Enchanted City By posted at 6:00 am on July 22, 2013 “ It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends .” – Joan Didion 1. It becomes palpable in late spring, when I receive a pair of unconditional offers posted first-class Royal Mail. I give ample…

Earlier this year , thousands of people checked their e-mail and found a surprise: An American soldier needed help, and there was something in it for them. Their correspondent was a sergeant stationed in Iraq, he explained. He had accumulated millions in hundred-dollar bills—the older ones being…

apr 30, 2013 – Save By Tom McCormack Artwork from ASCII Art Dictionary (possibly 1999). This is the second in a three-part series to be published on Rhizome. The first part, exploring the history of the emoticon, can be found here . The final installment (forthcoming) will explore the history of the…